THE NECROLOGIST (Pt. 2)

There’s a reason you shouldn’t do business with friends and family. If Bill Canarsie has a shortcoming it’s that he likes helping the people who mean something to him. That’s a big shortcoming. With anyone else the man’s a surgeon, but with a good friend, a man with whom he’s shared adventures and spilled blood… well, he’d have been better off without.

Bill has his phone to his ear. He keeps his voice to a stage whisper. No one needs to hear the message he’s leaving for his son. “Rhesus, it’s been three weeks. I’m hearing rumors from the State Department. They’re afraid you’re going native. What are you doing? This isn’t what we talked about. I want to hear from you. Please.”

He hangs up with nothing more to do than sit in the sheriff’s office and wait. He looks around at the commendations, the framed photographs of law enforcement people, the cheap attempts decoration. He squirms in his chair of imitation grain and cheap acrylic upholstery. He would never have subjected himself to such dizzying depths for anyone but a real friend.

Bill hears an iron collision from some distant quadrant of the building. About time, he almost mutters. The door opens. The sheriff walks through first, appropriately servile, then two guards. One of them has an obnoxious moue spackled on the front of his head, but Bill ignores it—he’s a kid, he doesn’t get it. Between the guards and sheriff comes his friend, Carl Fulsome, chairman and C.E.O. of Fullmach Industries. The man has spent the better part of the last two decades carving the commercial world into an oyster of his own design. He’s bankrolled senators, plied them buffets of vice, and hung the remaining skeletons in their closets. He’s elected presidents like he was Leo crowning Charlemagne and brought them to heel like Gregory at Canossa. He’s now spent twelve hours in the county jail. His coif of silver and black has lost some luster and definition. His eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep. As he walks into the sheriff’s office, his steps are heavy and his soles scrape the linoleum. This is no circumstance to befit a titan.

Bill shakes the sheriff’s hand. “Thank you, Sheriff,” he says. “I appreciate your understanding.”

“Happy to help, Mr. Canarsie.” The sheriff turns to his prisoner. “I’ll give you as much time as I can, Mr. Fulsome. I’ll be outside if you need me.”

Fulsome dismisses the man and his guards with a grunt. The office door closes, and the two old friends embrace.

“How are you getting on, Carl?”

“The board’s giving me the runaround. I’m protected for right now, but that’s not going to hold past this week.”

Bill sits. “When do you think you’ll make bail?”

Fulsome is pacing, a mill’s wheel starved for grist. “My lawyer should have it together by tomorrow,” he says. “Nancy’s not taking my calls. Won’t let me speak to the kids. She’s going to use this to fleece me dry in a divorce just because she can.”

“Want me to talk to her? Get her to think things through and—”

“I want you to help me, Bill.”

The best necrologist in the business tenses up. He rubs his hands together, tries to get another fire started. “What does your lawyer say?” Bill asks.

“He talks about dragging out the process, burying the prosecution in motions, outlawyering them. He thinks he’s managing my expectations, but at five grand an hour he can’t even do that, let alone get rid of the body and the prints and the fibers and all that.”

“Has the prosecutor offered a deal?”

“I’m not taking it.”

“If you did, how long would you—”

“I’m not pleading out.”

“If you did—”

“Less than fifteen.”

“You should take it.”

“Are you a fucking lawyer now?”

“I’m your friend, and I’m telling you to take the deal.”

“I am not going to prison.”

“Carl?”

“No!”

“Listen to me, Carl.”

“I know what you can do, Bill, and I want you to do it for me.”

“Listen to me.”

“Bill!”

“Carl, fifteen years or my price? Make the deal.”

“Your price is that high?”

“Yes, and you don’t want to pay it.”

“Try me.”

“I’m not kidding, Carl.”

“Neither am I. Name it. Name your price.”

Bill feels the walls closer than Fulsome does. He chokes on the compressed air. He leans forward in his seat and rubs his eyes, for no reason other than to delay the agonizing inevitable. “First,” he says, “you have to tell me your story.”

“You know the story.”

“I need to hear it from you. The whole thing. No spin, no prevarication, no lies. I need to know what the obituary should say.”

“It should say he was a bright kid who had a great future ahead of him, he was well liked by all, and Fullmach will miss him dearly. Why is that so—”

“You don’t dictate the obituary, Carl.”

“Just do this for me!”

Bill lifts his head. He meets his friend’s weary, wrathful gaze. He’s seen Fulsome direct that look at others many times over the years, and he’s seen those on the receiving end of it wilt and like greenery under an apocalyptic sun. But Bill doesn’t wilt. “Carl,” he says, “you are a very wealthy man. I know what you’re capable of, so trust me when I tell you that all your wealth and prestige and power holds no sway with the forces I serve. People much heavier than you have tried to throw their weight around with us. They’ve all failed. Our terms are not negotiable, and you don’t want to agree to them. So, for the last time, as your friend, don’t ask me to do this for you.”

Fulsome spins around a chair, sits, and faces Bill like a mortal enemy on the opposite side of a conference table. “Where do you want me to start?” he demands.

Silence swallows the room, and Bill bows his head. He needs a moment of funereal reflection to muster the professionalism he’ll need for this. Once it’s passed, he inhales sharply and retrieves The Ear from his briefcase. It sits on the sheriff’s desk like a Newton’s cradle as Bill opens his mouth, his voice weak. “Start at the beginning.”

“A couple years ago Rollie  asked me to speak at his school for Career Day. Middle school. The kid was in one of my lectures.”

“What do you mean ‘lectures?’ How did that work?”

“They put each of the parents who came to speak in a room. Each period the students would change, like they were going to different classes.”

“Okay.”

“The kid was in one of them. Said he wanted to go into business. Asked a bunch of questions.”

“What was the kid’s name?”

“What difference does it make? Next thing I know, he was friends with Rollie. Started showing up at the house, staying over. And when he was there, the kid always found an excuse to talk to me. Not even about business. About anything. I didn’t like him, but he’d already wormed his way into one of Rollie’s best friends, so what was I going to do? Tell my son the kid can’t come over? It wasn’t like he was a bad influence or anything.”

“So, he and Rollie remained friends?”

“Yeah. Nancy loved the little shit. He would kiss her ass, call her Mrs. Fulsome. And she’d let him. You know, sometimes I think she even had a crush on the kid, if you can believe that. This fucking kid had everybody buffaloed, I swear to god.”

“What happened between then and now?”

“Junior year of high school they had to do some community outreach, so Rollie asked me to set them up with the Foundation. Fine. Once a week for three months they answered phones on Saturday. Then out of nowhere the kid’s arm-in-arm with Bryce Lonegan. He started nosing into corporate affairs, somehow got hold of a password for the executive springboard—”

“Hold on.”

“—or maybe he hacked it or got somebody to hack into it, but—”

“Hold it, Carl. Go back. How did the kid meet Bryce Lonegan?”

“I don’t know. He met him through the Foundation or something. What’s that—”

“Tell me, Carl. How’d they meet?”

“Why is that so important?”

“Because you’re skirting it.”

“Are you judging me?”

Fulsome lobs the accusation with a fearsome undertone, but Bill doesn’t flinch.

“Are you?” Fulsome screams.

Bill looks at his friend, motionless. It’s not Fulsome’s ferocity that’s stilled him. It’s the sudden onset of rockribbed certainty, that bracing turn of a key that answers all your questions and charts the passage of events you now know will undoubtedly unfold. I’m the only one who can see the faint ember of regret flicker beneath Bill’s lids as he blinks.

He opens his briefcase and returns The Ear to its confines.

“What are you doing?”

Bill’s voice is a thread of silk on the air. “If you wanted my help, you wouldn’t be lying to me.”

“You’re calling me a liar?”

“Yes, Carl, I am. But by all means do something about it.”

“Why are you doing this? Why is this happening?”

“What was the kid’s name, Carl?”

Bill watches the sputtering fissures begin to spiderweb over a man who was once unflappable bedrock. The man who once laid low nation-states is disintegrating, falling in chips and flakes to be carried away by a breeze too lugubrious to register.

“What was his name?”

Bill Canarsie watches an empire collapse, crumble to the floor, its face hiding in its hands as all the lies are shed through tears. Bill can barely discern the name through the hysterics.

“Noah.”

Bill returns The Ear to the sheriff’s desk and closes his briefcase. He sits, his friend weeps, and the hands of the sweatshop-bred wallclock provide a sheepish click of rhythm to the ovine squeal of self-pity. When Fulsome lifts his head, it is soaked and reddened. For the first time in thirty years Bill looks at his friend and sees a very small man. But Bill’s a professional.

“Go on,” he says.

Fulsome swallows, gasps for breath. “Noah,” he says. “I met him at Career Day. Thirteen.” A smile forms, then melts away as the tears return. “So beautiful!”

I’m watching this, and I can’t help but think that I see a twinge at the corner of Bill’s mouth. If I do, if some rasp of emotion peeks out from its hole, I don’t know if Bill is registering disgust or shame or pity or what. But I don’t like it. A pro like Bill can’t indulge a feeling. He can’t give Carl Fulsome a break, and he can’t twist the knife. Carl Fulsome is a figure in a spreadsheet.

“He loved me, Bill,” Fulsome says. “Or I thought he did. We saw each other for four years. I… opened myself to him like I never did to anyone. Not even my wife. We would… If I had to go out of town, I’d fly him out, put him up in my suite—and another room in case I had to have people over—and we would talk. I’d hold him in my arms and tell him… there’s nothing I didn’t tell him. I took care of him, gave him money, bought him whatever he wanted. We made plans. He was my kept woman.

“I brought him to Dubai once, and he just… He laid on top of me while I ran my fingers over the small of his back, and he cried about how he couldn’t tell anyone about us, that they wouldn’t get it. We knew what we had was real, but he hated having to live a lie. I kissed his tears as they ran down his cheek, and… I told him that I hated it too. But we had to be patient. Once he was legal, we wouldn’t have to hide anymore. In the meantime I’d make sure he got into Cornell Business, then a great junior exec position in Fullmach to start, and we’d be off.

“Then, he hooks up with Bryce fucking Lonegan. You know how I found that out? He told me, Noah did. Same time he told me we were through. I asked him why, and he said…” The anger retreats a step as the grief returns and flanks it. “He said Lonegan was prettier. Younger, leaner, a better fuck. Like a teenager knows what good sex is.” The anger sweeps everything else aside. “He looked at me like I’d been a waste of his time. Wasn’t sorry at all. He didn’t even get angry at me for making him feel like the bad guy. The little faggot didn’t care.”

Bill asks, “Where did this happen?”

“At the Foundation. After hours. No one was there.”

“Your suggestion?”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t want to meet in public? Some place you wouldn’t make a scene?”

“Aren’t you listening? He didn’t care!” The sting of disregard is fresh all over again. “He knew everything I did to the people who crossed me, and he wasn’t scared of me.”

Bill nods and lets his eyes fall to the floor. “What do you want the obituary to say?”

“I want it to say that the kid got what was coming to him. That he was a sociopathic parasite who hustled the wrong man and got what he deserved. That he made his choices, and you’re a schmuck if you grieve for the loss of that opportunistic little queen!”

Bill nods again and returns the Ear to his briefcase. “I can do that, Carl. But I have to make you aware that I can’t rewrite history. Everyone will think the way you want them to, but the prosecutor will still have all the physical evidence. You’ll still be on the hook for murder. You’re not going to wake up tomorrow in your own bed and—”

“I get it,” Fulsome says. “My lawyers can deal with the murder charge. I want you to make sure no one gives a shit that that kid’s dead.”

“I can do that.”

Fulsome claps his hands. “Good. Now what’s your exorbitant price?”

“Fifty-one percent of Fullmach.”

“What!?!”

“That’s the price.”

“I’m not giving you a controlling interest in Fullmach.”

“It won’t go to me, Carl. It will go to my employers.”

“I don’t care who it would go to. I’m not paying it.”

“Yes, you are, Carl.”

“No, I am not, Bill.”

“Carl, the moment you started telling me the truth, you entered into a binding contract.”

“I didn’t sign any papers.”

“Doesn’t matter. You did.”

“I’d like to see that hold up in a courtroom.”

“The people I work for follow very different laws, Carl. You don’t have a choice.”

“I make one phone call, and I sink the global economy. I think I do.”

Bill stands. “You think because you know what I do that you understand it. You don’t understand anything, Carl. You think money buys what I can do? Money is nothing to the people I work for. Their metric is a language you don’t have the anatomical capacity to speak. They don’t haggle, and they don’t answer questions. They don’t have to. They don’t even have to tell you what you owe them. And the explanation that I’m offering to you at this very moment is nothing more than a professional courtesy.”

Bill waits for all the possible counter-arguments to spin through Fulsome’s mind like reels in a slot machine. He waits for each of them to faceplant on the finality of his words, for his friend to experience the flush of impotence, its concomitant frustration, and then his begrudging acceptance.

Fulsome nods a head full of grinding teeth.

Then Bill adds, “And everyone will know about you and Noah.”

It pains Bill to see his friend erupt into desperate indignation, to hear the betrayal quaver his tone, to watch the tears again well and spill down his face. But Bill never breaks his gaze. He’s stalwart, betrays nothing.

“Everyone who knows me will look at me and see what we did. That kid came on to me! And everyone’s going judge me? Who the fuck are they to pass judgment? Who the fuck are your bosses? I want to meet them.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Bill breathes.

“I’m a fucking customer!”

“So was Faust.”

“Forget it. I don’t want it anymore.”

“They don’t take returns, Carl.”

“I’m not paying!”

Bill leans down and picks up his briefcase.

Fulsome’s finger shoots in Bill’s direction. “You’re judging me too. You want this. You think I deserve to be ruined.”

Bill walks to the door.

“I’m your friend!”

Bill stops with his hand on the doorknob. “This was a transaction, Carl. I was your friend when I told you not to go for it.”

On his way out he tells the sheriff that he and Mr. Fulsome have completed their business.